Who is Arngunnur Ýr? Behind the scenes with the artist in residence 2025

Behind the scenes with the town artist 2025

Who is Arngunnur Ýr? „Goodness me. That's the thing, I don't know if I know myself completely,“ said Arngunnur Ýr Gylfadóttir with a light tone while making a video the day before the awards ceremony where she was named the 2025 Artist of the Year for Hafnarfjörður.

Arngunnur Ýr has lived here in Hafnarfjörður for nearly a quarter of a century. But only with one foot. She also lives in California and is building a house in Hawaii with her husband, Larry Andrews, whom keen swimmers are often happy to meet at the Suðurbæjarlaug. They have two grown-up children. One of them lives abroad. The other one is here at home.

„I can say, however, that I've needed to make art since I was one year old, my parents say. That's true. I was always drawing. The strongest drive in me is this need to express what I experience. That's usually on paper, canvas or a wooden panel. It's always been that way for me,“ she says, but at the same time points out that she is also a flautist.

Music has its place

„I finished music school and have played with all sorts of orchestras and chamber groups. That's also an important part of my life,“ she says. „I can say for certain, though, that art is important to me and I use it to express what I experience and human nature.“
Arngunnur Ýr is the eldest of five siblings. Her parents are Gylfi Baldursson, an audiologist, and Rúrí Jónsdóttir, a neuropsychologist. They travelled widely. „Even though my dad was in a wheelchair, we travelled all over the country,“ she describes. „We went salmon fishing and travelled all over the country.“
Art itself later became a guide for her. „That's when you learn so much about your own country. About agriculture, the geology, and I'm always adding to my knowledge there,“ she says, describing how the landscape became her means of expression.

„This knowledge influenced how I paint my pictures. I have worked from nature as it is. There are 100 different layers in my paintings but then I attack them and destroy them,“ she says, describing how she works on the pictures, sometimes placing thick Byko tape over a painting she has spent many months painting. Sometimes she has been overly ambitious with the work.

„The risk is what makes it so exciting and takes the work to another level,“ she says. „But that's life. It's not just beautiful. We're so deep. We lose things, there's sorrow and hardship. So I feel I have to have that alongside the beautiful.“
Iceland always pulls the hen

An evolving career

Arngunnur describes how her focus has changed. She painted sky paintings for ten years. Similar, yet unique in their own way. „Later, I paint mountains, national parks, combining national parks from different countries.“ The family lived in Canada for a time, in Nova Scotia. From there, Arngunnur Ýr moved back home and travelled alone on the ship Gullfoss. Her younger sister, Gunnhildur Sif, who died in a car accident in 1987, was living there at the time.

„There is always a connection between the eras and what I have painted. It mainly revolves around three things. The immense sorrow of losing my sister and how everything changes in an instant when she dies in a car crash. How tiny we are in the face of these enormous forces around us, and how we don't accept that. And that nature controls us, not the other way around.“

Flied home from Hawaii

Arngunnur Ýr flew home from Hawaii to attend the awards ceremony. „I am so truly proud. Really honoured, happy and grateful. I want to give back and it feels wonderful to get something back in return,“ she says, clutching her wonderful house in the suburbs of Hafnarfjörður, Sléttuhlíð.
„I'm not going anywhere and will never sell my house here, as I'm so fond of the local atmosphere,“ she says, smiling.